Story-Telling

Posted on December 3, 2024 in D20 iCore Skill

Frame of Reference: All Skills are bound by the character's Setting (physics), and the details that their culture/society's Science (gathered by Technology), direct experience, and/or collective Records are capable of revealing. A character may not be able to apply their full measure on a different world, with different species and tools.

Stories are verbal records of information, specifically tales meant to be passed on as a form of knowledge. Stories can be used to pass down information as a reference work, verbal records of true events and/or static information. Stories are often told about real world places and people and events as a means of passing on hard won information and factual news. Maybe embedded therein in memorable fashion are measurements of distance and time, position and details, flora and fauna that are important for the hearer if they are to travel through a certain region.

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Story in Myth: At the heart of myth is the story, and it is often formed through the natural evolution of telling stories and passing on what resonates deepest. They turn into mythic tales or fairy tales of morality through the application of religion and/or history. Oftentimes they are then localized and so you have a large variation of the same basic themes that has been inflated with hyperbole and localized elements to make it memorable and applicable for one audience and another and so on. Myth is usually a long tale of epic scope or impact, or collection of tales that was once intended to teach, to preserve, and to inform. Time, translation, cultural meaning, and true elements that have no reference point any longer, can swerve to turn information into myth.

Ultimately, stories are what bind things together across vast gulfs in The Pattern.

Preserving: There are many things that can be done to stories to assist in their preservation. Using memes, structuring (such as Iambic Pentameter used in epics), Menomonie tricks. Localizing references also make them more relevant and easier to remember.

Changing Nature: Like written records, stories change and transform over time. Some of the things that help preserve them are the same elements that lead to change – changing references to local events, figures, and places. Variations such as regional accent, affectations, ethnicity, social class, and context evolve over time and serve to confuse in translations over time. Language structure and evolution can also transform the text of a record as it is passed along.

• Many stories have had real figures, places, and events changed in name (for various reasons), but are clearly referencing a more well known version.
• Association: Orders, institutes, businesses, faiths and cults, in addition to making their own, will often use common or popular stories and impose their own vernacular to claim legitimacy or credibility in the association to the common story. They also use it in an attempt to encrypt information and make it for a specific audience.
• Oftentimes news is embellished with story elements to make it more memorable and for it to be passed on so that the core elements are part of a larger pageant and for the discerning listener they may be able to discern the original intent and elements.
• Not only that, but the intent can often blur original details, where entertainment purposes make details irrelevant or even distracting from the entertainment value and so they are substituted or omitted.

Mystic Uses

Formulae, rituals, etc.

Elan is bound up in memes and myths and those figures tied to the stories they represent.

Signs and Omens are sometimes communicated through stories. The vagueness of their delivered form often becomes revealed as something the subject of or in parallel to well known stories. Revealment may be interpretive or obvious, though either will point to the importance of having known the story and its true meaning. This interpretation can also be transformative of a story – showing its true context and lending credibility to the teller and or subjects and objects within the story.